World leaders can B.S. too
Princeton students know how to procrastinate. We're also very familiar with the art of b.s. -- especially when it's almost break, and we just want to be done and go home.Apparently, world leaders know how to do this too.Today marked the end of the Copenhagen climate talks. Though some had speculated that the talks would run into Saturday morning or even Sunday, The New York Times reported at 5:00 p.m. EST that a tentative "agreement" had been reached. A laudable achievement after two weeks of bickering... until you read the fine print. The agreement is non-binding and there is no longer a deadline for setting a binding accord. According to the Times,
"The accord drops the expected goal of concluding a binding international treaty by the end of 2010, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiation before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form."
Hmmm ... perhaps I cheered too early?But it gets worse. The draft, which is yet to be ratified by all 193 countries at the talks, calls for the agreement to be "reviewed and put in place by 2015." That's 3 years after the Kyoto Protocol runs out. Wasn't the whole point of Copenhagen to make a Kyoto replacement?Also dropped was the agreement for industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and for the world to reduce emissions by 50 percent. Instead, the draft says "deep cuts" are necessary without going into specifics.Sounds to me like the politicians decided it was time to go home. Rather than extending the meeting over the weekend, our world leaders decided to turn something in just for the sake of being done, regardless of quality. President Obama actually encouraged the countries at COP17 to reach an agreement, regardless of how imperfect it was, when he arrived in Copenhagen this morning. He argued that an imperfect agreement would be better than inaction -- a good point, but the result is nothing more than inaction dressed up in a fancy bow.We're all guilty of turning in something other than our best work at some point or another -- but I had hoped that our world leaders could do better. They're not in college anymore.